"Let me think a minute," begged Nat, and, while he assumed an attitude as though he was trying to solve a problem in geometry, Fred drew out a little tin fife and played such a doleful air that Nat cried:
"How do you expect me to think with that thing going?" and, with a quick grab he snatched it from Fred's hand and sent it spinning across Jack's room.
"I have it!" Nat exclaimed, when the excitement had somewhat subsided. "You all know what timid creatures Professors Gale and Hall are. They room together, and I believe they'd scream if they saw a mouse. Not that they're a bad sort, for they have both helped me a lot in my lessons. But men ought not to be such babies. Now what's the matter with a couple of us disguising ourselves as burglars and going into their rooms about midnight? The rest of us can hide and hear the fun."
"Maybe they'll shoot," suggested Sam.
"Shoot! They'd be afraid to handle a revolver," was Nat's comment.
"Well, as long as it won't do any real harm, and as we positively have to have something happen, let's go on with it," said Jack. "Who'll be the burglars?"
"Nat'll have to be one," spoke John Smith, as he proposed it."
"Ll-l-let me be t-t-the o-o-o-other," said Will Slade haltingly.
"What? And when you demand their money or their lives how would you say it?" asked Sam.
"Nice sort of a burglar you'd make. 'G-g-g-give m-m-m-me y-y-y-your m-m-mon—'"